Over the Wine-Dark Sea

by Harry Turtledove

  "No, he doesn't," Menedemos answered. "He's not even sure I'm anybody, if you know what I mean. He got into a fight at his symposion, and left in a huff. That's why I had to go out the window."

  "You're lucky you didn't break your leg, or maybe your neck," Sostratos said. "Is a woman really worth running that kind of risk?"

  "If I hadn't thought so, I wouldn't have gone there, would I?" Menedemos said, a little testily. Looking back on it, he supposed it hadn't been worth the risk, but he would sooner have gone up before a Persian torturer than admit that to his priggish cousin. If Phyllis wanted him to pay her another visit, he knew he just might do it.

  "Foolishness," Sostratos said.

  "Yes, O best one." Menedemos used the honorific with intent to wound. By Sostratos' scowl, he succeeded. He said, "And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep. It's been a busy night." Trying to walk as straight as he could, he headed for the bedchamber. His ankle complained. So did Sostratos. He ignored both of them.

  A house slave at Lamakhos' brothel shook her head, as barbarians were wont to do. "Maibia does not want to see you today," she said.

  "What?" Sostratos stared as blankly as if she'd spoken Oscan or Latin rather than pretty good Greek. "She can't do that!" With a shrug, the slave just repeated herself. Sostratos started to push past her. A couple of other slaves - men: toughs with the look of bouncers - appeared behind her. He checked himself. "Let me talk to Lamakhos, then." The woman nodded and went away.

  "Hail, friend," the brothelkeeper said, his smile still broad and, Sostratos judged, still false.

  "Hail," Sostratos replied. "We had a bargain, you know."

  "Yes, I do know." Lamakhos shrugged. "Women are funny, that's all I can tell you."

  "We had a bargain," Sostratos repeated: for him, that was sacred. Lamakhos shrugged again. Sostratos nervously cracked his knuckles. "Is she angry at me? If I did something to offend her, I'll apologize."

  Lamakhos turned to the slave woman. "Go find out." She nodded again and hurried off in the direction of Maibia's chamber.

  When she came back, she spoke to Sostratos: "She says it is not that. She says you should come back tomorrow. Maybe then."

  Realization smote. She's playing at being a hetaira. A girl in a brothel had to take her customers as they came, do what they wanted when they wanted it. A high-class courtesan, on the other hand, had the looks and the charm and the wit to take men on her terms, not theirs. That made them more alluring, of course - if you had to persuade them, that showed, or seemed to show, they really wanted you.

  Do I let her get away with it? Sostratos plucked at his beard. Maybe Maibia thought he really had fallen head over heels in love, in which case he would put up with anything from her. If she thought that, she was mistaken. What Menedemos thought of as foreign homeliness attracted him - but love? He tossed his head. He couldn't imagine falling in love with someone with whom he couldn't talk seriously . . . and Maibia's mental horizons were no wider than was to be expected of a girl kidnapped from a Keltic village and sold to a brothelkeeper.

  That still didn't answer his question. He'd given Lamakhos a break on the price of the silk for free access to the girl. He supposed - no, he was certain - Lamakhos could make Maibia give herself to him now. But that would only make her sullen, and Sostratos wasn't one of those who enjoyed his girls resentful. Had he been, he would have bedded the Thracian slave back home more often.

  Or he could ask Lamakhos for the five-drakhma discount back. He could - but the brothelkeeper would laugh in his face and tell him to go to law. The fuss and feathers would prove more trouble than the money was worth, and what were his chances of getting a fair judgment, even against a brothelkeeper, in a polis not his own?

  "Well?" Lamakhos said. "Shall I go shake this nonsense out of her?"

  "No, never mind," Sostratos answered - the blunt question made up his mind for him. "I'll come back tomorrow."

  As he turned to go, he saw contempt in Lamakhos' eyes. The brothelkeeper tried to hide it behind his friendly mask. His slaves didn't bother. "Pussy-whipped," one of them said to the other, not quite softly enough to keep Sostratos from hearing. His ears tingled, but he kept walking.

  Back at the rented house, Menedemos said the same thing. "Complain all you want about me and Phyllis," he added, "but that's nothing beside letting a barbarian slave lead you around by the prick."

  "No, no, no - you don't understand," Sostratos said. "She isn't. I'm not mad for her, the way men get when they're assotted of a woman. By the gods, I'm not."

  "Then why didn't march right in there and screw her?" his cousin demanded. "You let yourself look like a fool in front of a whoremaster."

  "Maybe a little," Sostratos admitted - though it was more than a little. "But I'm not going to buy the girl and take her with me. This way, her owner will start thinking of her as somebody who could be a hetaira: after all, didn't she have the merchant from Rhodes wrapped around her finger? She'll have an easier time of it after I'm gone. Maybe she'll even get the chance to buy herself free."

  His cousin gave him a quizzical look. "You'd never catch me acting the fool for the sake of some slave girl."

  "You probably wouldn't catch me doing it back in Rhodes," Sostratos said. "Here in Taras" - he shrugged - "who cares?"

  Menedemos didn't seem altogether convinced. "I still think she's got you by the balls, and you're making up excuses."

  "Think whatever you like," Sostratos answered. "You'll see."

  But when he went to Lamakhos' the next day, he had all the earmarks of a worried lover. He sighed with relief when the house slave said Maibia would deign to see him. "I brought her a present," he said, and showed the slave a small vial of cloudy green glass.

  "Maybe she will like that," the slave said, but her eyes showed her scorn.

  Maibia waited inside the chamber where they'd joined before. Sostratos had expected her to be naked, but she wore a chiton of the Koan silk Lamakhos had bought from him. Her nipples pushed against the filmy fabric; he could see their rosy pinkness through it. Down below, the thin silk showed him the groove between her legs - like most women who lived among Hellenes, she singed away the hair that grew around it.

  "You look - lovely." Sostratos' voice sounded hoarse even in his own ears. He might not be madly in love with the Keltic girl, but that didn't mean he didn't want her. Oh, no, it didn't mean that at all.

  "Indeed and I'm glad you think so," she said, cocking her hip at a provocative angle. She pointed to the glass vial. "And what might you have for me there?"

  Sostratos started to say, I might have anything, but he'd used that joke before. Some people repeated themselves endlessly, not even noticing they were doing it. He wasn't - he hoped he wasn't - that sort of fool. Other sorts? Possibly. He handed her the vial. "It's rose perfume from Rhodes," he answered.

  Maibia opened, sniffed, and sighed. "Sweet it is - like you." She dabbed on a little, then closed the vial and cast her arms around his neck. He could feel her body through the silk chiton as if she were bare, too.

  Before very long, she was. The next little while passed most enjoyably indeed, at least for Sostratos. Maibia kissed him on the end of the nose, then leaned down and bestowed another, similar, kiss. "There, you see?" she purred. "Was I not worth waiting for?"

  That brought Sostratos around to what he'd come to the brothel for - to one of the reasons he'd come to the brothel - faster than he'd expected. He sat up in bed and stroked Maibia's hair, which was a distracting mistake. "There's something you need to understand," he said.

  "And that is?" Maibia found a way of her own to be distracting. She glanced up at him, mischief in her eyes. "How soon your spear's ready to pierce my flesh, now?"

  "No." Sostratos tossed his head. To prove he meant it, he sat up in bed and pulled away from her. "What you need to understand is, I'm not nearly so wild for you as Lamakhos and his slaves think, and you're not going to squeeze me dry no matter how hard you try. The harder you try, in
fact, the more annoyed you'll make me."

  His tone got through to her. She was mercenary - considering what life had given her, she had to be mercenary - but she wasn't stupid. Fear replaced mischief on her face. "Why didn't you just have 'em thump me, then?" she asked sullenly. "I know some who'd take their pleasure from it, sure and I do."

  "I wouldn't," Sostratos said. "Here is the bargain: I will not buy you, no matter what. I've already told you that. But I will let you play the hetaira with me and have your little ways - so long as you don't do it often enough to make me angry. That will give you a better chance to go on playing the hetaira after I leave Taras, it is not so?"

  Maibia studied him as if she'd never really seen him before. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe hope and greed had kept her from noticing the person inside the man who enjoyed her body. "Not just cool, but cold-blooded as a frog y'are!" she exclaimed.

  Sostratos shrugged. Most of the time, he would have taken that for a compliment. "I can only be as I am," he said. "Meanwhile, you didn't answer my question: is it not so?"

  "Sure and it is," the redheaded Kelt said seriously. "Having to take any horny spalpeen who walks in . . ." She shuddered. "If you were in a boy brothel, would you care for that?"

  As he had to Menedemos, he replied, "If I were in a boy brothel, I don't think I'd get much trade."

  She laughed. "How many would say that?"

  He shrugged once more. "What could be more important than the truth?"

  That made Maibia laugh again. "Here in a brothel, what could be less important than the truth? If we told the men what we thought of 'em, if we told Lamakhos what we thought of him, how long would we last?" No sooner had she spoken than she looked worried. If Sostratos took her words to the brothelkeeper, what would he do to her?

  He didn't intend to do that, but she couldn't know what he intended. He wondered what the girls who made symposia lively really thought of the men who used them. The question hadn't crossed his mind before; unless he badly missed his guess, it seldom crossed the mind of any Hellene. Probably better not to know, he thought. He didn't take advantage of such women very often - Maibia had been an exception. Would this keep him from doing it again if some other girl struck his fancy? The truth, he reminded himself. No, it probably won't.

  Telling that to the Keltic girl struck him as less than wise. He did say, "Do we have a bargain, on the terms I put to you?" He might have been selling silk or papyrus.

  "We do that," Maibia said at once. She held out her hand. He clasped it. Her skin was much fairer than his, but her hand was as large as many a man's and her grip firm. Yes, this did feel like commerce. But it was commerce of a particular sort, for she went on, "If I'm to hold up my end of the bargain, you need to hold up yours," and went back to what she'd been doing. This time, Sostratos didn't interrupt her. He set a hand on the back of her head, not quite holding her to him but urging her on.

  He didn't need to pretend to seem sated when he left Lamakhos'. The brothelkeeper chuckled under his breath as Sostratos went by. He thought Sostratos was well and truly hooked. Sostratos chuckled, too. He knew he wasn't.

  When he got back to the rented house, he was surprised - and a little alarmed - to find Gylippos and his Roman majordomo there. "Menedemos tells me you've made a pet of that redheaded wench," the dried-fish merchant said. "I think she's strange-looking, myself."

  "I like things that are out of the ordinary," Sostratos said, and then, "What brings you here, sir?"

  "I've decided to buy a couple of more peafowl chicks," Gylippos replied. "I want to have a better chance of having at least one peacock."

  The little birds ran peeping and cheeping across the courtyard, stopping every now and then to peck at a bug or a bit of grain or another chick. Sostratos wondered how Gylippos would like having four full-grown peafowl in his own courtyard, but that was the Tarentine's worry, not his.

  Menedemos had caught a couple of chicks. He limped back toward Gylippos, saying, "The choice is yours, of course, O best one, but I think these two are the biggest, strongest ones we have right now." As if to prove the point, one of them pecked him on the arm. He cursed.

  Gylippos laughed. "They do seem lively," he said. "What did you do to your ankle?"

  Sostratos started at the question, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Menedemos laughed easily. "Tripped over my own two feet - them and a pebble," he answered. "I feel like a fool. We rode out a nasty storm on the Ionian Sea coming over from Hellas, and I was steady on my legs no matter how the deck pitched and no matter how wet it got. Put me on dry land, and I go and do this."

  "Bad luck," Gylippos agreed. Sostratos studied him from the corner of his eye. Was he disingenuous? He was a trader, too; Sostratos couldn't tell. Gylippos said, "I'll buy the one that pecked you, but go run down that mottled one over there for me, too."

  The mottled chick didn't want to be run down. Menedemos had to chase after it. Gylippos eyed him as he limped around. The dried-fish dealer's face didn't show much, but Sostratos didn't like what he could see. Gylippos was paying altogether too much attention to his cousin's bad ankle. How much noise had Menedemos made when he left by that second-story window? Enough to raise Gylippos' suspicions when he saw an acquaintance with a limp? Evidently.

  At last, after much bad language, Menedemos caught the little peafowl. He brought it over to Gylippos, saying, "Here you are, sir. As far as I'm concerned, now that you've got it, you can roast it."

  "Not at these prices." Gylippos turned to Titus Manlius, who'd been standing there quietly, watching Menedemos with him. Sostratos couldn't read the slave's face at all. Did he know? If he did, had he told his master? Gylippos said, "Pay him the money."

  "Yes, sir." The Roman might have been a talking statue. He handed Menedemos a leather sack. "Same price as for the last two chicks."

  "I ought to charge more. These are bigger birds," Menedemos said.

  Gylippos brusquely tossed his head. "Not likely."

  Menedemos glanced toward Sostratos. Sostratos tossed his head, too, ever so slightly, as if to say he didn't think Menedemos could get away with it. With a small sigh, Menedemos said, "Well, never mind. Let me count the coins, and you can take your birds away."

  Sostratos sat down on the ground beside him to make the counting go faster. The Tarentines minted handsome drakhmai, with an armored horseman holding a javelin on one side and with a man riding a dolphin on the other. Some people said that was Arion, others that it was the hero for whom the polis of Taras was named.

  "All here," Sostratos told Gylippos when the counting was through. "We do thank you very much."

  "You have things I can't get anywhere else," Gylippos answered. He dipped his head to Titus Manlius. "Let's go." Off they went, carrying one chick each.

  Once the door closed behind them, Sostratos said, "I think he knows, or at least suspects. Did you see how he was watching you?"

  "I doubt it," Menedemos said. "What kind of a man would do business with someone who'd been screwing his wife?"

  "There are people of that sort," Sostratos said. "Back in Athens, Theophrastos called them ironical men: the sort who chat with people they despise, who are friendly to men who slander them, and praise to their faces men they insult behind their backs. They're dangerous, because they never admit to anything they're doing."

  "Men like that aren't proper Hellenes, if you want to know what I think," Menedemos said.

  "Well, I agree with you," Sostratos answered, "but that doesn't mean they don't exist. And it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous."

  Menedemos waved his words away. "You worry too much."

  "I hope so," Sostratos said, "but I'm afraid you don't worry enough."

  Menedemos did stop going round to Gylippos' house, even though checking on the peafowl chicks would have given him a perfect excuse to visit. He thought Sostratos was mistaken - Gylippos didn't strike him as lacking self-respect to the point of staying polite to an adulterer - but he decided not to take any needless chances. And
if Phyllis wants to try again, she knows where to find me, he thought.

  He sold the last adult peahen, along with four chicks, to a rich farmer who lived just outside of Taras. "To the crows with me if I know what I'll do with 'em," the fellow said, "but I think it'd be kind of fun to have a peacock strutting around the barn. I seen the one that Samnite bought, and I decided I wanted one my own self. I figure my chances for getting one peacock out of all the chicks are pretty fair."

  "Of course." Menedemos wasn't about to argue with him, not when he was putting down good silver for the birds. "And you can breed them and sell birds yourself and make back what you're paying me and more besides."

  "That's right. I sure can," the farmer said. Menedemos wasn't so sure he could. Once these chicks grew up, a lot of people in and around Taras would be breeding and selling peafowl. There would be a lot more birds for sale, too. Prices were bound to drop. But if the farmer couldn't see that for himself, Menedemos didn't feel obliged to point it out to him.

  The Tarentine had brought an oxcart and a couple of cages with him. The one for the peahen was a little small, but he got her into it. Off he went, the creak of the cart's axle almost as raucous and annoying as the peahen's screeches.

  Sostratos was flicking beads back and forth on a counting board. "How does it look?" Menedemos asked.

  "Not too bad," his cousin answered. "We'll show a tidy profit when we get home." Sostratos looked up from the beads. "Now that you've sold the last of the grown peafowl, do you plan on sailing back toward Rhodes?"

  "Not yet, by Zeus," Menedemos answered. "Doesn't look like we'll be able to get to Syracuse, not with the Carthaginians pressing it so hard, but I was thinking of taking the Aphrodite up the western coast of Italy toward Neapolis. How often do the cities there get the chance to buy Khian wine and papyrus and ink and Koan silk? They should pay through the nose."

  "Plenty of pirates in those waters," Sostratos observed.

  "Plenty of pirates everywhere these days," Menedemos said. "We've been over this before." But Sostratos wasn't really arguing, not as he'd argued against stopping at Cape Tainaron. His tone was more that of a man pointing out the risks of doing business. Menedemos added, "Since we'll be sailing north once we pass between Italy and Sicily, maybe we'll find more of these redheaded women you like."